New Horizons
by highlandgypsy
Summary: A dozen years after the war, Greg and Kate Boyington are facing a crossroads in both their careers and their marriage. Greg has an idea that will take the family in a new direction but he hasn't told Kate about it. In the meantime, Kate is struggling to juggle a career as a military wife, mother and civilian journalist. Prologue to a full-length Black Sheep story to come later.
1. Chapter 1

**NEW HORIZONS**

A dozen years after the war, Greg and Kate Boyington are facing a crossroads in both their careers and their marriage. Greg has an idea that will take the family in a new direction but he hasn't told Kate about it yet. In the meantime, Kate is struggling to juggle a career as a military wife, mother and civilian journalist.

I wrote this as part of a group challenge to see characters from a previous story interacting outside of their traditional settings. Please consider it a prologue for my upcoming Black Sheep Squadron story "The Legacy," to start posting later in the spring of 2018. (That's vague. Sorry. March-ish. Probably. Better?)

Please enjoy. Reviews welcomed.

 **Chapter 1**

 **Summer 1957**

 **Camp Lejeune, North Carolina**

Colonel Greg Boyington pulled the jeep into the driveway of the little bungalow and killed the engine. Silence echoed in the street's post-midnight darkness. It was nearly 1 a.m. and he was finally home.

Home. He shook his head.

Home had been such a fluid concept for most of his adult life, he tended not to think about it.

Now he thought about it every time he came back to whatever housing he, Kate and the kids were currently calling home. No amount of fresh paint or determinedly optimistic pots of geraniums by the front door could disguise the fact that the structure was little more than temporary shelter. Their current lodging was just a brief respite until the Marine Corps sent them off again like a band of gypsies to another assignment on another military base where everything looked the same, no matter the continent.

They had no roots, no sense of place to call their own. It was just him, Kate, Joy and little Jim trying to make one nondescript temporary house after another feel like that's where they belonged. They succeeded, mostly. Neither he or Kate put much value in material things beyond what they needed to live. They had their work and the kids and each another and that was enough.

Wasn't it?

It hadn't bothered him initially. The sheer delight of reuniting with Kate after the war and the realization he was a father, then their marriage and the realization he was going to be a father again swept him along on a tidal wave of personal joy and a nationally shared post-war euphoria. Life was good. It didn't matter where they were. They were a family and they were happy.

But she deserved better.

Inside the house, a dog barked, a single, sharp alert. That would be Kilt, the perpetual motion machine of a border collie Kate brought home within days of their arrival in North Carolina. Meatball had been gone for years and the kids had begged repeatedly for another dog but it hadn't been practical until now. Greg had been assured his posting here was long-term, another way of saying the desk he was flying was likely to be permanent. The dog had fit right into the family. In addition to being a certified canine lunatic, Kilt was a constant companion for the kids and Kate when he was gone, which lately had been more than he wanted to think about.

Kate didn't complain about Greg's workload any more than she complained about where they lived. She'd never complained in the South Pacific either, and they'd been camped in the Empire of Japan's backyard then, with semi-warm showers on a good day and air raids shredding the fighter base on a bad one. He knew she didn't set store by lace curtains and God knew neither of them were the white picket fence type but she still deserved better. Maybe she never complained but he knew their transient lifestyle over the last 12 years wasn't her dream. Now he finally had the chance to give her something beyond the nomadic existence of a military family.

She would insist it didn't matter but that wasn't the point. She'd already been living a nomadic existence when they met. They'd both served – he in the Marine Corps and she in the press corps. She'd tramped all over Europe before the war blew her to the South Pacific, into the middle of his squadron and into his heart. He'd been shot down in '44 and spent the final years of the war as a POW. She'd returned to the States, given birth to their first child, and fiercely refused to believe he was dead. Once they'd been reunited, she swore she didn't care where they went, as long as they went together.

They'd gone, all right. The ink was barely dry on their marriage license before they were off to New Zealand where he was part of the mopping up operations in the Southwest Pacific, then briefly to Hawaii where Gregory James – little Jim - was born, a short stay in the States before heading to Korea, followed by postings in Germany and Alaska until landing here at Camp Lejeune. Seven moves in 11 years as he'd gone from major to lieutenant colonel to colonel. The woman was a saint.

She never complained each time he'd had new orders cut. She just smiled and said, "You're gonna owe me for this, Boyington," and started packing. And she always collected on her debts, he thought with a smile.

Now he was going to ask her to do it again. One final time. It was going to mean a huge change in their lifestyle – for him, for Kate, for all of them – but nothing in their married life had ever been remotely _normal_ before and he didn't see the point in worrying about that now. He wasn't sure either of them were meant for normal anyway. Their relationship had begun with the adrenaline fueled attraction that came from living and working together on a fighter base in the middle of a war. Genuine, lasting love had grown from that initial powerful spark, a tapestry woven of trust, respect and the ability to make the sum of the parts somehow greater than the whole when they put their minds together. He wondered occasionally if they'd met under more traditional circumstances, if they would have noticed each other, let alone snapped together like a magnet to steel.

Oh yeah. He would have noticed her no matter where they met and the way he caught her watching him even now, when she thought he wasn't looking, made him pretty damn sure she would have noticed him, too.

He couldn't stay in the Corps forever. The clock was ticking. The kids needed to grow up with a home base that didn't change on the whims of Uncle Sam. Joy was 13 now, Jim, 11. They needed somewhere to call home, so when they were grown with kids of their own, their childhoods had more substance than globetrotting through a blur of military bases. They needed trees to climb, streams to wade in, horses to ride and a big yard where they could camp out and watch shooting stars in the summer and build snow forts in the winter. A big rambling house where they weren't all living in each other's back pockets, a place where Kate could have a garden and he could have more to do than push paperwork from one side of a desk to another.

From the American Volunteer Group to the Black Sheep during World War II to Korea and now with America in the middle of this so-called Cold War, he'd spent his entire adult life in the military. The truth was, he didn't know how to be a civilian and if Kate didn't have his six, he wasn't sure he'd do a very good job. Failure was not an option.

Greg leaned back in the seat and studied the little house in the quiet, dark neighborhood. This wasn't really about a house. They could live anywhere. They'd proved that more than once. Kate was the most delightfully low maintenance woman he'd ever known and their kids had grown up sharing that adaptability. It wasn't just about the roof over their head.

He missed working shoulder-to-shoulder with her like they had during the war. The hours he spent helping her in that tiny, cramped dark room when they first got to know each other. The hours she spent on the flight line, taking photos, and in his tent, asking endless questions for her newspaper stories. She'd driven him crazy. Bright, tough and with the most gorgeous set of legs he'd ever seen, he'd initially thought of her only as an attractive nuisance. Then slowly, she'd become more than just the damned reporter his CO had assigned in hopes the press scrutiny would have the Black Sheep of VMF 214 walking the straight and narrow.

That plan hadn't worked. Not only hadn't it worked, Kate had become an asset to the squadron, giving her talents freely in their constant battle with Colonel Thomas Lard over supplies to keep the unit functioning as they amassed the best kill record in the theatre. She and Greg had grown from adversaries to friends to lovers, their relationship tempered by the blood and fire of living in a war zone.

He knew Kate missed the war days, too, not the constant danger and fear of loss every time the squadron lifted off, but because they both had a shared purpose. She'd never been the kind of girl to sit and watch from the sidelines. She wasn't happy unless she was up to her sweet ass in whatever was going on around her.

Now, she was just another military wife. She raised the kids. God knew he wasn't around as much as he should be. She worked at the local newspaper although he'd gotten the distinct feeling lately things there were not what they should be. She cooked and cleaned and pretended it was all fine. He knew better. She'd never be the kind of woman who was content to spend the morning dusting and vacuuming, then going to afternoon teas with other wives on the base. The slender girl who could out-drink half a Marine squadron during the war could still put away Scotch with alarming efficiency.

This was not always viewed as a sterling quality for the wife of decorated war hero but he didn't really give a damn what anyone else thought. She was as bold and impetuous as she'd been when they met in '43 and he loved her for it. If they hadn't had one another, he often wondered how much they might have turned to alcohol for comfort in the post-war years.

Whenever he tried to gauge her level of discontent with their domestic situation, she told him firmly she was fine and would he please stop worrying about her, damnit, and go teach the next generation of boys who were going to war what they needed to know to keep from killing themselves when they got into the cockpit. She cleaned his house and ironed his uniforms and cooked his meals. And when he came home after another interminably long trip, she made it clear how much she'd missed him. Sometimes it seemed like making love was the only way they connected any more. Not that he was complaining but she needed more than this life offered and he knew it. He needed it, too.

That feeling of working in partnership for a common good was what had drawn them together in the first place and he wanted it back. This time it wouldn't be for the benefit of a squadron of smart-ass, college boy fighter pilots. It would be for themselves and their kids.

The opportunity had dropped in his lap two weeks ago, a chance phone call from a buddy he served with in China, before the Black Sheep. All he had to do now was convince Kate this was the right move. And leave the Marine Corps.

It would be worth it. He'd been working for Uncle Sam since he was 18. Now, he needed to be there for his wife and kids on more than an as-time-permits basis before he missed any more of their lives.

Joy needed to stop growing up so fast. She was practically a woman now. Just last week he'd chided her for wearing dungarees and saddle shoes to school for three days in a row. "Don't you own a dress?" he'd asked. "But Daddy! It's what all the girls are wearing!" she'd shot back defiantly. He saw her mother's temper looking out of those bluegreen eyes, then she tossed dark curls over her shoulder and left before he could tell her to change her clothes.

The girl was quick as a fox, an honor student who excelled in math and spoke three languages. English, of course, but a scant 10 months in Seoul left her passably fluent in Korean and somehow the 14 months they'd spent in Dresden and Heidelberg found her speaking German like a native. She was a sponge when it came to learning new things, something Kate often pointed out was a double-edged sword.

And little Jim, named after Jim Gutterman, one of Greg's execs during the war. Every time Greg looked at him the kid had grown a few inches taller. He had his mother's gray eyes, a dimple in one cheek and a smile that was going to draw girls like pure sin in a few more years. His devil-may-care attitude had him finding endless ways to get in trouble. Greg wasn't entirely sure how many of them were Jim's original ideas and how many were Joy's. Sometimes he thought the girl put her little brother up to things just to see if he'd do them.

When Jim came home from school one day with a box jammed with more baseball cards than he could have ever possibly afforded with his allowance, both Greg and Kate had asked where he'd gotten them.

Jim had replied without missing a beat he'd bet his friends five cards each he could make his way across the width of the cemetery behind St. John's Church, leaping from headstone to headstone, before the groundskeeper chased him off. Then he had proceeded to do exactly that, running the last 25 yards in a careening, breakneck attempt to stay atop the stones while the enraged groundskeeper stormed after him, waving a rake.

"But what if you hadn't been able to?" Greg asked his son. "You don't have enough cards to give all your friends five each. You wouldn't have been able to pay the bet."

"They didn't know that," Jim said smugly.

At that point Kate had grabbed Greg by the wrist and drug him out of the room, then collapsed against the wall in paroxysms of silent laughter.

"Oh, lord, he's just a younger version of you!" she'd gasped. "I don't know if you should punish him or teach him how to play poker. We're in serious trouble if he can already bluff that good."

Greg had laughed but it only solidified his determination that it was time for the Boyingtons to make a clean start, even though he imagined Joy's wardrobe issues and Jim's wheeling and dealing were probably going to follow them wherever they went.

He sat, listening to the crickets and the tick of the jeep's cooling engine. The house was dark except for a light over the kitchen sink and the soft glow of a lamp from their bedroom. He looked at his wristwatch. It was nearly 0100. She'd waited up for him in spite of the delayed flight out of Denver.

She always waited up for him. He didn't blame her. He'd left her one sun drenched morning in the South Pacific and not come back for two years. So now she always waited, welcoming him with a kiss and a beer and a hundred questions about his trip. As far as she knew, this trip to the West Coast was just routine USMC business. It had been. Well, most of it. The side trip to visit Jack Hanson, a pilot from his days with the American Volunteer Group in China, at Jack's place near Lake Tahoe, left Greg hoping he'd found the family's next – and last - move.

He leaned against the steering wheel, anticipating Kate's reaction to his news. There were a few things he wouldn't tell her yet. She'd find out soon enough if – when – she went to see the place with him. Like the raccoons living under the porch. And the kitchen's original 1894 fixtures, right down to the hand pump in the sink. No, he mused, she didn't need to know that right away. There were plenty of things she hadn't known when she came to La Cava and that had all worked out fine, hadn't it?

When he told her the basics, she'd have something smart to say, those gray eyes going dark as she turned it over in her mind. She'd be quick to sketch out the pros and cons, to see the plan from all angles. As long as he'd known her, she'd been an invaluable sounding board, from the Black Sheep's schemes to fixing the bathroom plumbing – straight forward, sensible and not afraid to take a risk. Definitely not afraid to take a risk. And admittedly sometimes not so sensible.

" _I don't care where we go, as long as we're together."_

She meant it. No matter what continent they were on, she was always there for him. She'd been flying wing for him for since 1942. Watching his six. Saving his ass. Teasing. Laughing. Those eyes. Those legs. The intensity she brought to their bed.

He felt the familiar tightening in his loins at the thought of her arms around his neck, her lips brushing his as she welcomed his body. Even after 12 years, two kids and seven moves, all she had to do was look at him through those dark lashes and the years fell away. That night on La Cava when they'd made love by a fire on the beach for the first time, he'd never dreamed it would lead to this, that she would give him so much. He looked at the tidy little rented house. It was just another in a string of temporary bases they'd never see again once they moved on, but everything he cherished was in there.

His woman. His kids. Even his damned dog.

Dogs, plural, he corrected.

Now they had a second dog, a newcomer, who was going to multiply into God only knew how many more dogs in the very near future. A month ago, Kate found the starving, filthy stray hanging around the barn where she and the kids went to ride, where Joy worked on weekends to pay for riding lessons. Of course, she brought it home. The kids gave it a bath and upon discovery it was a female, Joy named her Valor in a fit of romantic patriotism. Greg thought it was a fancy name for a dog but then but no one had asked him, given that the only dog he'd ever called his own had been named Meatball.

Now Valor slept on the kids' beds and bossed Kilt around and acted like she owned the place. Greg had to admit she was a pretty dog, with one blue eye and one brown and a thick coat of mottled shades of gray, black and white fur with tan highlights. Kate said the color was called blue merle and she thought Valor was an Australian shepherd although the breed was only starting to gain popularity in the United States and she'd not seen many of them.

Valor had the habit of wiggling her entire rear end when she was happy, which was most of the time, and a soft, endearing expression, except when she was giving Kilt hell. She ate like there was no tomorrow and as the weeks progressed, it had become obvious why. Valor was in the family way.

Kate said they'd deal with that when it happened. Her sister, Sarah, who raised dogs for the Army's military working dog program, had sent her a long letter detailing what to do when the puppies arrived. Kate had committed it to memory and poured over veterinary texts detailing what was normal and what wasn't in the realm of canine parturition. The vet had estimated the delivery date to be at least a week from now so they still had some time to decide how to deal with the pending canine population explosion. Two dogs and four people already had the small house bulging at its seams.

Greg smiled in spite of it all and swung out of the jeep. It was good to be home, even if it was one he hoped they'd be leaving before the summer was over.

 **XXX**

Thirty-six-year-old Kate Boyington sat on the floor of the small, Spartan bedroom, her back pressed against the foot of the bed. She was barefoot, wearing denim pants – the kids called them dungarees - and a man's white shirt rolled up to her elbows. It did not escape her that, short of the saddle shoes, this was the same fashion trend that had caused undue friction between her daughter and her father earlier in the week. Unlike Joy's carefully scripted wardrobe choices, Kate's was the result of grabbing the first clothes that had been available when she got home from work.

It was also not what she'd planned to be wearing this evening but those plans had gone awry when Greg's flight home from the West Coast was delayed due to heavy weather in Denver. He'd called to tell her instead of arriving back at the base at 7 p.m., he'd be lucky to get here by 2 a.m. The bottle of vintage Scotch and two glasses sat untouched on the bedside table and the new black lace negligee remained in Kate's dresser drawer, unlikely to make an appearance any time soon. She was tempted to break the seal on the Scotch. At least she could enjoy that alone.

The day had been, in her estimation, the closest she'd ever come to getting fired on the spot and it had nothing to do with her skills as a news reporter and photographer. It never paid to kick a skunk, she mused, but damned if she was going to sit there while her asshat editor-in-chief treated one of the office girls like she was there for his entertainment.

Twenty-year-old Ella Jenkins was fresh off the farm and timid as a church mouse, which made her the perfect target for Elliott Randall. Kate had watched the problem escalate for several weeks and two things were clear. One, the shy, coffee-skinned girl was uncomfortable with Randall's attention and two, she didn't know how to handle it. So Kate handled it for her.

That afternoon when she'd seen Ella cringe politely away as Randall stroked her arm in the far corner of the Jacksonville _Evening Gazette's_ newsroom, Kate had risen quietly and in three strides, been at Ella's side. Randall immediately dropped his hand and turned to glare at her. With a pleasant smile on her face, Kate said through gritted teeth, "The next time I see you harassing any of the female employees in this office, I'm going to file a complaint with the police on behalf of all of the women who work here. And then my husband is going pay you a visit to talk about how real men treat women."

Randall had gone so pale Kate thought he might pass out. She rarely played the "I'm Greg Boyington's wife" card but when she did, it was to good effect. Greg's reputation still preceded him.

"Are you threatening me, Mrs. Boyington?" Randall choked, trying to marshal his wits.

Kate ignored the question. She took a step toward him and noticed with satisfaction that he stepped back nervously.

"Don't even think about touching Ella when I'm not here, either, because if you do, I'll find out and I'll make whatever Greg could do to you look like a good old boy's back slap."

Randall sputtered wordlessly and walked stiffly away.

That did it, Kate thought. They wouldn't fire her outright but no doubt her staff position would be mysteriously eliminated in short order. Randall had never liked her. She didn't care whether he liked her or not but she understood newspaper politics as well as the next guy, who, in this case, probably was a guy. There were few women on the news staff. She'd been hired because of her nationally known work during the war. Michael Simmons, the _Gazette's_ publisher, recognized talent when he saw it and hired her in a heartbeat after the family settled at Camp Lejeune. Randall had been less than impressed. He thought a woman's place was in the bedroom, not the newsroom, but he left her alone.

Kate suspected the reason he'd never targeted her for his special attention was twofold. She carried herself with a confidence that radiated an absolute refusal to tolerate that kind of crap. And she was Colonel Greg Boyington's wife. Those two facts created a shield that allowed her to excel at her craft without being subjected to the locker room atmosphere that was frequently the norm in the newsroom. If the editor at the city desk couldn't keep his eyes off her legs and if the sports editor cast admiring glances at her curves when she walked by, that was all they did.

Kate didn't mind being identified as Greg's wife. He was a national war hero, after all. She flexed her left hand and the simple gold band on her third finger flashed in the soft light. She'd spent the war years hiding her real identity. Her bylines and photo credits from the European and South Pacific theaters always read "K.C. Cameron," never Katherine Christine Cameron. She'd been fine standing behind the shield of anonymity then, since it took her places no woman would have been allowed otherwise. It was Colonel Thomas Lard's monumental error in assuming K.C. Cameron was a man that placed her on Vella La Cava in the Solomon Islands, embedded with VMF 214 in the summer of 1943.

Twelve years later, her byline read Katherine Boyington and she didn't really care if people ever made the connection with K.C Cameron or not. She knew who she was. What she shared with Greg went far deeper than names and public perception.

Still, the day's episode reminded her, again, that maybe it was time to move on to something new. If Randall went to the publisher and pitched a fit, she'd likely find a box on her desk Monday morning no matter how talented she was. She might be untouchable as Greg's wife but she was also likely to find herself unemployable, as well. Her tendency to speak her mind was appreciated by Greg but not necessarily by the good old boys network at the newspaper.

Good riddance, she thought. She was tired of battling men for prime story assignments. When the paper needed a photographer for a breaking news event, Randall always sent one of the men, never her. The dullness of reporting city council meetings, of taking photos at ribbon cuttings for the chamber of commerce and pictures of area gardeners with eggplants that resembled Hollywood celebrities was draining the life out of her. Every day she could feel herself slipping closer and closer to going under the surface and drowning in a world where the only things women talked about were gelatin molds and Tupperware parties.

She needed a new job, one that didn't tie her to an office. Maybe she would go back to freelancing. She'd done it before. Or open a studio, although studio photography didn't really appeal to her. She liked the unpredictability of real-time photojournalism. She wasn't an adrenaline junkie, she'd had enough of that during the war, but she'd started to chafe under the predictable routine of the _Gazette_. That, and working for an editor who thought women's contributions to journalism should be confined to recipes and skirt lengths and whatever he might persuade them to do in his office with the blinds pulled.

When she'd first been hired, Randall suggested she focus on writing articles for the paper's society pages and leave the real news coverage to the men. That went over about as well as a turd in a punch bowl. Kate told him when she'd dived into a foxhole while enemy bombers strafed the Marine Corps fighter base where she was stationed in the South Pacific, she hadn't given fashion trends or recipes much thought. He'd blustered and tried to intimidate her. It hadn't worked and while she knew the man was afraid of her, Kate saw the writing on the wall. She needed to get out of the newsroom.

She'd spent the rest of that day in an office where the tension was so thick she could have cut it with a knife. After work, she shuttled the kids off to their weekend social engagements, then came home with plans to have a late dinner and pleasant evening with Greg when he got back from his four-day trip to the West Coast.

Only she'd come home to . . .

. . . this.

She looked beyond her bare toes to the open closet door. A furry shape lay on its side, curled protectively around three smaller shapes that looked like plump guinea pigs.

Valor, who apparently hadn't read any of the whelping information Sarah sent, had conveniently ignored the fact her temperature was supposed to drop in the 24 hours preceding delivery. Or maybe, Kate thought, she'd just gotten tired of having her temperature taken and had decided to get on with the project.

In any case, Kate had found her happily ensconced on the floor of the closet in the master bedroom, one puppy nursing lustily and Valor in the process of licking clean a second one, whose wet, slightly bloody presence indicated its recent entry into the world.

Kate sat down next to her and stroked the dog's beautiful head, letting delight in the puppies wash away the day's stress. After a few moments of telling the shepherd what a brave, clever girl she was, Kate rose and went down the hall to her office, shook her head at the sturdily constructed whelping box sitting empty in one corner, then collected the towels, bottle of iodine, baby scale and other miscellany she'd carefully prepared and carried it back to her and Greg's bedroom. She'd born two children herself and knew there'd be no rushing the process.

Valor was steady if not in any particular hurry. A puppy appeared about every 30 minutes and five of them were snuggled close to their mother's belly when headlights flashed across the curtained window and an engine shut off in the drive. Kate glanced at her watch. 1250 hours. Greg was home sooner than she'd expected but it wasn't going to make any difference. Her plans for the evening had gone awry long before now.

A key turned in the kitchen door and she heard the familiar scrabble of paws as Kilt, who'd been banished from the proceedings in the bedroom, charged to meet Greg. There was a brief interlude of happy dog noises and gruff words of affection. Kate heard footsteps coming down the hallway.

"Cameron?"

"In here," she called softly. After all these years, he still called her by her last name when they were at home, a carry-over from the war years and one that always triggered a feeling of nostalgia.

The bedroom door pushed open and Greg started in, then froze when he saw Valor, his blue eyes widening in surprise. It wasn't often Kate saw him truly caught off guard and she laughed.

"We're having puppies," she said.

"I see that." He didn't move. "Okay if I come in or is this a woman thing?"

Kate laughed again, remembering some of the things she'd said to him during Jim's birth. It was just like him to think the same attitude might well apply across species lines.

"You're fine. Come sit down." She patted the floor.

Greg tossed his cap onto the dresser and folded himself on the floor next to her. He loosened his tie as he studied the process underway below the neat row of uniform trousers and dress shirts.

"They're due next week, huh?" he observed.

"I guess no one told her that. She's had five so far, three boys, two girls. They're beautifully marked. I don't know who the father was but she had good taste."

"What happened to the whelping box?"

Kate had coerced him into spending an afternoon constructing the box to specs Sarah sent. They'd situated it in a quiet corner of Kate's home office and Valor had shown every evidence of being delighted with it. Until she'd made her nest on the floor of the closet and gone on with proceedings there.

"Oh, it's still there," Kate said with amusement. "Apparently her highness changed her mind. It's a girl's prerogative you know."

Greg looked out the door into the hallway, listened, then looked back.

"Are the kids asleep?"

"Probably not. Joy's at a sleepover at the Thompsons' for Julie's 14th birthday and Jim's on a campout at the Stanersons'. They're probably both hopped up on birthday cake and roasted marshmallows and won't go to sleep until they come home tomorrow."

"They'll be disappointed they missed this." He indicated the puppies.

Kate nodded.

"Jim, especially. He really wanted to be here when they came." She yawned. "That boy's going to end up in either med school or vet school and bankrupt us for sure."

In the closet, Valor shifted to inspect puppy number six as it slid into the world. She efficiently bit away the membrane enclosing the tiny creature and licked it clean. When she was done, Kate picked up the puppy and set it on the baby scale. She checked the weight, daubed the umbilical cord with iodine and placed the puppy back with its littermates. It immediately pushed its way to the milk bar.

Greg watched as she wrote on a notepad: #6, blue female, 14 ounces, yellow.

"Yellow?"

Kate pulled a short length of yellow yarn out of the bag at her elbow and tied it loosely around the puppy's neck.

"I swear they all look the same, plumbing notwithstanding," she said. "They're all blue merles and their markings are incredibly consistent. If I don't tag them, I'll never be able to tell them apart."

"Do you need to tell them apart?" Greg looked bemused. "Isn't that the mother dog's job?"

"It's a good thing I didn't have twins," Kate said drily. She stood and disappeared into the bathroom to wash her hands. Her voice carried through the doorway. "I need to keep track of their weights, to make sure they're all gaining and getting enough to eat."

She sat down again.

"How was the conference?"

Greg yawned and leaned his head back against the bed. Not for the first time, Kate thought he looked tired in a way he never had during the war.

"The usual."

He didn't have to say any more. In the last few years, his assignments had gradually dwindled from flying missions to serving as a flight instructor to flying a desk. While his experience was invaluable and his opinion sought on strategy and pilot training, Kate knew he would rather be actively flying, even peacetime campaigns, instead of the advisory capacity that left him traveling for endless strings of meetings with joint task forces.

They sat, watching Valor and puppies.

"Greg?"

"Katie?"

They spoke at the same time. Greg squeezed her knee.

"What's on your mind, sweetheart?"

Kate knew she wore her emotions on her sleeve. It was one of the things that made her an abysmal poker player.

"I may not have a job come Monday morning."

She told him about the incident with her editor.

"You did the right thing." Greg rubbed her back. "I wouldn't have expected anything less from you." He chuckled. "I'm surprised you didn't take a swing at him."

Kate laughed reluctantly.

"I thought about it, believe me. I think Randall might be so pissed off he takes it up with Simmons. This isn't the first time I've crossed him."

"His loss," Greg mused. "We're financially sound. You know you don't have to work."

She knew. She wrote the checks for the family's bills each month, saw the numbers carefully recorded in the ledger. They were in the black and comfortable. She wanted to keep it that way and while her pay at the _Gazette_ wasn't much, she carefully put it away for the kids' futures. She hadn't graduated from college herself but very much wanted Joy and Jim to have that opportunity, no matter what fields they chose to pursue.

"But I can't _not_ work." She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "I love you and the kids and God knows keeping track of everything around here is practically a full time job in itself but I need . . . I need work that's more than laundry and cooking." Frustration tinged her words. She knew he would understand, knew he felt the same way about the turn his own life had taken.

He shifted toward her and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

"Katie, there's something we need to talk about."

Something in his voice pulled her up short.

"I stopped at Lake Tahoe on the way home from Pendleton."

She looked at him skeptically.

"Camp Pendleton is in San Diego. Lake Tahoe isn't on the way home from San Diego, unless you're really lost." She recognized the grin playing over his handsome face. He had something up his sleeve.

"It was this time. Jack Hanson, an old friend of mine from the American Volunteer Group lives out there and runs a charter air service near Tahoe Vista. I flew into Carson City and drove up to see him."

"That was nice of you," she said cautiously. His tone indicated there was more at stake here than just a visit with an old war buddy.

He took her hands.

"Jack's selling the business. After his partner retired, he scaled back a little and ran it solo, but then his wife died and now he's decided to retire and move closer to his grandkids. He called me two weeks ago and wanted to know if I – we – were interested in buying. He's selling the private air strip, house, outbuildings, planes, everything."

Kate blinked.

"If we are interested . . ., " her voice stumbled. " . . . in buying a charter air service? He . . . you . . . two weeks ago? Why didn't you say something earlier?" Kate wondered guiltily if he'd dropped any hints and she'd been so lost in her own world she'd missed them. That never happened during the war. They practically finished one another's sentences then.

"I wanted to go see the place and run the numbers, so I'd be ready when I told you about it." Greg made a wry face. "I knew you'd have a hundred questions I couldn't answer."

She squeezed his hands. He was right. Her mind was spinning with the possibilities.

"Tell me about it," she said simply.

"The business is a little bit of everything. A lot of charters with local outfitters to fly hunting and fishing parties around to area lodges, sightseeing trips for tourists, light freight, occasional help with search and rescue and the fire service. The client list goes with the business. We wouldn't have to start from the ground up." When she didn't say anything, he went on. "I'd do most of the flying but I think we could hire a second pilot during the busy season. Jack said he had more work than he could handle by himself right now. He's got two Cessna 120s and an old R4D that's in pretty good shape.

"I won't sugar coat it – the place needs work. There's a big house and a barn. You could have a horse." He paused, grinning apologetically. "The barn might be in better shape than the house but even with renovations, we can swing it, sweetheart. He shot me a price and I countered it but said I needed to talk to you first."

He grinned and Kate's heart skipped a beat. There was a familiar sparkle in his eye that took her back to some of the Black Sheep's capers. She hadn't seen that look for a long time. This was how the crazy started.

In the closet-turned-whelping-box, Valor shifted, panting. Kate's attention snapped back to the dog. She checked her watch. It had been nearly an hour since the last puppy arrived.

"Is everything all right?" Greg asked.

"I don't know. She didn't go this long between any of the other puppies but she doesn't act like she's done. I've got Doc Haworth's number by the phone if I think – oh – wait – here it comes."

The seventh puppy finally spilled into the world. The shepherd licked it clean and nipped the cord. Kate picked it up.

"Oh, a tri-color this time," she said, admiring the black and white markings, highlighted by the hint of rich copper accents to come. "And he's huge, 16 ounces. No wonder you took so long getting here." She gently placed the puppy among its littermates. "You don't get a yarn collar, I couldn't confuse you with any of the others if I tried."

"Is she done now?"

"I don't know," Kate said honestly, stroking Valor's flank before leaning back against the bed. They sat in silence, watching the puppies. Several of them had stopped nursing and fallen asleep in a contented pile. Valor still had a look of concentration on her face.

"Go on, you were telling me about making Jack a counter offer for his business," Kate said, forcing her mind back to their suspended conversation. As a military wife, she was used to being uprooted at a moment's notice, packing up their lives into boxes, focusing on Greg's next assignment and getting the kids settled into a new school in a new town. She hadn't minded, really. She'd known what she was signing on for when they married and the sacrifice was worth it. The family was her priority. She could handle another move. Hell, she could handle it in her sleep by now. The Lake Tahoe area was bound to have a newspaper or two. She could find a job or do some freelancing, at the least. Not for the first time, she thought life might have been easier during the war.

Greg's smile broadened as if he were reading her mind.

"Katie, if we do this, I'll need a partner to help with the business end of things – a dispatcher, someone to handle phones and paperwork. Someone who knows how to deal with pilots. Someone organized, who can work odd hours under crazy conditions." He cradled her face in his hand. "I need you in order to make this happen. Unless you really want to keep working in newspapers, we can make it happen together."

 _Together._

Realization slowly dawned. The six months they'd worked together during the war had been some of the happiest of her life, not only because she'd found herself falling in love with a fighter pilot nearly 15 years her senior but because she loved the way his mind worked. She loved the way her mind worked when they were together. The way they brought out the best in each other when they joined forces. Lately, they'd spent too much time going in opposite directions.

Greg's next words echoed her thoughts.

"You and me, working together, for ourselves and the kids, not for someone else. Joy and Jim are old enough now we don't have to watch them every second so they don't kill themselves." He paused, clearly re-thinking that statement. "More or less."

"This means you're ready to leave the Corps?" she asked softly. "You're not that old."

"Sweetheart, I was an old man 10 years ago. You know the boys never let me forget it."

She poked him in the ribs.

"You weren't then and you aren't now. There's nothing old about you."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she snuggled against him.

"Kate, I need to get out before I _am_ an old man. I want us to make something that we can call our own. Besides the kids."

"Listen to you, getting all philosophical. You sound like Bobby Anderson."

Greg snorted.

"That'll be the day. Tell me what you think, Katie. I can't do this alone, I need you with me. It'll be a risk and if you don't think it's the right thing for us, tell me now."

Kate didn't say anything, wasn't sure where to start. He'd done it again - spread the world at her feet and invited her to step across the threshold into something neither of them had experienced before. He'd done it so many times during the war - pulled her into the Black Sheep's insane capers, pulled her into his arms and taken her places she'd never been before when the two of them were alone. Her heart sang at the prospect of leaving their transient life behind and putting down roots, even though the concept was as foreign as any of the countries where they'd lived since their marriage.

She opened her mouth to reply when Valor whimpered. A hard contraction rippled across the dog's abdomen, just visible under the fur, and another puppy slid onto the towels. Unlike the others who protested their entry into the world with indignant whimpers, this one lay silent. Valor gave it a perfunctory poke with her nose. The puppy didn't respond. The shepherd nudged it again, pushing it away from her, then ignored it. She stretched out full on her side, put her head down and closed her eyes. Her expression clearly said, "I'm finished."

"Oh shit," Kate muttered and rolled to her knees, eyes pinned on the motionless puppy.

 **To be continued . . .**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Kate bit her lip as she looked at the puppy lying limp and motionless where Valor had pushed it away. Her gut clenched. The shepherd's complete lack of interest wasn't a good sign. The mother dog had, by all appearances, fallen asleep, seven puppies snuggled close to her belly.

Greg lay a warm hand on her shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

"It may have been in the birth canal too long while she pushed out that big tricolored boy," Kate said. "Sometimes the bitch can revive them but she doesn't have the energy, poor thing. Hand me a towel, will you?"

Wordlessly, Greg passed her a piece of soft terry cloth. Kate broke the membrane surrounding the puppy and wiped it away. Working swiftly, she tied off the umbilical cord with a length of dental floss, then cut it on the mother's side. The lifeless little form didn't move. Kate could hear Sarah's calm voice in her head.

" _If they're not breathing or it the bitch isn't interested, you need to stimulate their heart and lungs to get them started. Don't worry about being gentle. They're tougher than they look and if a puppy isn't breathing, it's going to die anyway."_

Kate picked up the bulb syringe from items she'd prepared and holding the motionless creature in her left hand, gently suctioned fluids from its nose and mouth. Beneath her fingers she felt the flicker of a heartbeat but it did not breathe.

"Can I do anything?" Greg asked quietly.

"Watch her," Kate said, pointing at Valor. "Make sure she passes the placenta."

Greg raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything. Kate was sure that was probably the strangest order he'd ever been given and she appreciated his unquestioning help. He'd asked her to do a few odd things over the years, especially during the war, and she'd always trusted his larger vision although more than once his requests had sounded off the wall.

She balanced the little body in the palm of her hand and rubbed it with the cloth, gently at first, then with increasing briskness. Her heart was in her throat. Valor had a beautiful litter of seven. One puppy more or less wouldn't matter, but it didn't seem right to let this little life fade before it started.

The puppy was female, with exquisitely asymmetrical markings on her face. One half was a solid black mask, the other blue merle above a white muzzle, her body a crazy quilt of dark fur and merling as if an artist had stroked her with a haphazard brush. Kate squeezed the tiny rib cage and continued to rub.

"Come on, sweetie, breathe for me," she muttered. The tiny body didn't respond. "No, no, no! You cannot die on me, I won't have it."

Remembering something she'd read in Sarah's myriad of notes, Kate raised the little creature's face to her own, closed her mouth lightly over its nose and blew gently. Still no response.

Kate blew into the puppy's nose again, hoping she was forcing air into tiny lungs that could still make use of it. Nothing. The bedside clock ticked away the seconds, loud in the silence. Was it only seconds? It felt like hours. How much longer could she wait? When the puppy twitched in her hand and gave a whimpering gasp, Kate jumped.

"Yes!" she exclaimed triumphantly. The puppy gave an indignant little sneeze and Kate hastily reached for the syringe. Greg pressed it into her hand and she applied it to the tiny muzzle, cleaning away remaining fluids. She was rewarded when the mouth opened, then closed on her fingertip. More annoyed noises followed when no milk was forthcoming. The little creature had gone from a lifeless shell to a warm, wiggling entity in a heartbeat. Kate said a silent prayer of thanks.

"That's the spirit," she whispered as the puppy continued to gnaw toothlessly on her finger.

"You never were any good at taking no for an answer," Greg said.

"As I remember, neither were you," she returned. "God knows I kept telling you no and look how that turned out."

Kate gently pushed several of the puppies to the side and set the late arrival next to her mother's belly. She immediately latched onto a nipple and began to nurse. Valor lifted her head to inspect the newcomer. She licked it, long tongue strokes covering it from ears to tail, and gave Kate a baleful look.

Kate laughed.

"I don't know if she's happy it lived or pissed at me for giving her another mouth to feed."

"She looks happy enough."

The shepherd surveyed her brood, then heaved a sigh of exhausted satisfaction and sprawled back on her side. Kate collapsed against the bed, drained.

"Did she pass the placenta?" she asked. The look on Greg's face told her the answer.

"Yeah," he said, "while you were trying to get the little one to breathe. And she, um . . ."

" . . . she ate it, didn't she?" Kate finished for him.

"Yeah. Are they supposed to do that? It wasn't like I was going to stop her."

"According to Sarah and three books I read on the subject - yes." She squeezed his hand. "Thanks for watching her. There's an afterbirth for each puppy and if they retain it, that causes problems."

They sat and watched the puppies nursing until one by one, they fell asleep, bellies extended.

"I think she's done. Number eight was the last one."

"You didn't give her a color," Greg pointed out.

Kate yawned and looked at her watch. It was 0315.

"She's the only one of the merles with a split black face. She and the tricolor boy stand out, they don't need yarn collars." She tucked several loose curls behind her ears. "I think this gave me gray hair. How the hell does Sarah do it with multiple litters a year?"

"She's made a career of it." Greg studied the puppies. "One hundred percent live births for your first litter. I'd say you did all right although I don't know what the hell we're going to do with 10 dogs in this house."

"We'll find homes for them. People at the barn have been asking already."

Kate stretched up and snagged the bottle of Scotch off the bedside table. Twisting the cap, she broke the seal, lifted the bottle and drank, then passed it to Greg.

"Welcome home, by the way," she added.

"You're amazing, you know that?"

She smiled at the warmth in his voice. During the two years they'd been separated, while he'd been a POW and she a single mother, she could close her eyes and hear that rough warmth, feel it resonate to the very center of her being and she'd known without a doubt he was alive and would come back to her. Even now, years later, that tone claimed her as his and took her back to the very first words he'd ever said to her.

" _Please excuse my dog. He has manners but they're all bad."_

He'd been picking her up out of the mud after Meatball knocked her on her butt in an enthusiastic greeting minutes after she'd arrived on Vella La Cava. It seemed like just yesterday.

"You may have mentioned that before but usually under different circumstances." She took another drink and offered him the bottle again. "We'll see how amazing I am when I'm cleaning out my desk on Monday morning."

Greg took the bottle without taking his eyes off her. Her hair was a tangle of soft curls caught back in a loose ponytail. How was it possible she hadn't aged? In the lamplight, she still looked like the girl who'd stepped off that C-47 on the La Cava airstrip in 1943 with a "What the hell have I gotten myself into?" look on her face.

Her shirt was smeared with God knew what and she looked worn thin. He knew it probably had less to do with the fact it was 3 a.m. than it did with the mounting strain she'd been facing at work. Say what you would about Kate's unarguable skills as a journalist, there were a lot of men who weren't happy to come home from the war and find a woman not only doing their job but doing it better than they could. Print journalism was still a man's world and the civilian newsrooms didn't always harbor the devil-may-care camaraderie the war correspondents had enjoyed.

He looked at the closet. Eight more dogs. Two adults, two kids, ten dogs in this cracker box of a house where he was gone more often than not, leaving her to juggle it all by herself. It was time for a change for all of them.

He cupped her face with his hand.

"Fly out to Tahoe with me, Katie. I want you to see the property. Jack said he'd give us a couple of weeks to talk it over."

She didn't hesitate.

"If this is really what you want . . .," she started.

"It's not just what I want. This is about us. You and I are good together and the longer I stay in the Corps, the further apart we're growing."

He saw her grimace and knew she'd thought the same thing, whether she said it or not.

"I don't know anything about running a charter air service," she said instead.

"Since when did that ever stop you?" He stroked her check with his thumb. "You know how to make things happen, you get it done. Remember number 403?"

She was quiet for a moment. He watched as her mind reached back through the years, then a grin broke over her face, growing larger until she burst into the dazzling smile that had hooked him from the first minute he'd seen her.

"Four-oh-three?" Her eyes widened. "Yeah, I remember. How could I forget! This isn't going to involve stealing a plane and me having to bail your sorry ass out of jail again, is it?" she asked. The look on her face was a combination of humor and disbelieving remembrance.

Greg chuckled, a sound that soon turned into a roaring belly laugh that had Valor lifting her head to stare, ears pinned back in disapproval.

"God, I hope not," he said, choking back the laughter. "A war correspondent pretending to be a nurse accompanied by a nurse pretending to be a USO girl bullshitting their way into the brig to get me and Hutch released so we could steal a plane – that couldn''t happen more than once."

"Good," Kate said firmly. "Because I'm not committing grand theft airplane for you again. Although technically, _you_ stole that plane. I was just an accessory."

Greg was still laughing, the memory fresh as if it happened yesterday, not years ago.

"I couldn't have done it without you, sweetheart. That morning when you showed up in full uniform at the brig on Espritos, I knew if we both lived through the war I was going to marry you because there was no way you should be turned loose on anyone else."

"Ha." She snorted. "That was the morning I knew I was just as crazy as you were." She shoved him gently on the shoulder. "But I didn't do it alone, I had help, remember? Tori and Hutch and TJ were in on it, too. Tori thought we were all mental, Hutch thought we were all going to get court martialed and TJ thought it was great. Of course, all he had to do was unlock the gate to get us onto the airfield then he spent the rest of the time in the officers club . . . and I ended up dancing with General Moore and he knew something was going on but I think he was afraid to ask. Oh, lord, Greg, we were so young back then." She trailed off in a laugh and they sat for a moment, lost in the memory.

She squeezed his hand. "Call Jack Hanson – I want to go see this property. If Randall convinces Simmons I'm a psycho bitch, I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands real soon."

Greg wrapped his arms around her and she snuggled against him.

"You're a lot of things, Katie, but a psycho bitch isn't one of them." He kissed the top of her head. "But you do have your moments."

"An air charter service," she muttered against his shoulder. "I don't like flying any more now than I did during the war. And now you want to buy an airstrip and airplanes and God knows what else. You're gonna owe me for this, Boyington."

"Counting on it."

 **XXX**

 **One week later**

The faded sign read "Hanson Charter Air, Est. 1941, Jack and Alice Hanson, Proprietors." Greg steered the rented car off the highway and up the long, graveled lane toward a cluster of buildings.

"It's beautiful out here," Kate said, looking out the window at the backdrop of the Sierras. Ahead of them, the lane curved and broke through a stand of trees to reveal a huge flat expanse of land ringed by evergreen, aspen and larch. To the east, a rambling Victorian house, resplendent in its faded glory, was flanked by a prairie style barn and assorted outbuildings.

One hundred yards to the west, two men had their heads together under the engine cowling of a Cessna 120. Behind them, an open door revealed the pristine interior of a vast hangar where a Douglas C-47 Skytrain rested. Kate blinked. She hadn't seen one of those troop transport planes in years. In a heartbeat, she was standing on the upper step of the passenger egress, the humid air of the South Pacific caressing her cheeks while she took in a muddy Marine fighter base and the group of men lazing against a jeep.

"Hope you still think that after you've seen the inside of the house," Greg said, bringing her back to the moment. "I think Jack mostly lived in the hanger after Alice died. He said he couldn't stand to be in the house without her there." He pulled the car to a stop and they got out.

A tall, gray-haired man with weather-worn features looked up from the engine and raised a hand in greeting. After a brief exchange with the second man, he resettled his Stetson and strode toward them, his brisk gait belying his years. He and Greg slapped each other on the back in greeting, then the man looked Kate up and down.

"You brought the missus! Damn, Boyington, you always had an eye for the ladies but you've outdone yourself this time. Ma'am, Greg said you were a knockout but I had no idea. How'd you hook up with this old flyboy, anyway?" His dark eyes flashed with the flirtatious charm Kate recognized as endemic to pilots around the globe.

"That's a really long story, Mr. Hanson," she replied, "and I should probably tell you my version of it, just to set the record straight." She looped her arm through Greg's. "There's no telling what this old flyboy told you."

"Jack. Call me Jack. And it's probably best you don't know." He grinned broadly. "I'd love to hear your version over a drink."

"It'll take more than one," she assured him.

Jack continued to tease her while Greg made formal introductions and the men chatted. Standing in the summer sunshine, the floral-print linen of her skirt blowing in the soft breeze, and with Greg in twill trousers and an oxford cloth shirt, she felt suddenly like they'd walked into another world, one marked by the total absence of anything resembling uniforms. Even the mechanic's grease-stained overall carried the Hanson Charter Air logo, not a military rank designation. There wasn't a speck of olive drab in sight. Was this what it felt like to go civilian again, she mused. It had been so long since her days hadn't started with reveille and ended with taps, relatively speaking, she'd forget a world existed where people marched to the beat of their own drum, not Uncle Sam's.

If they made this move, they'd be leaving a lifestyle that had been governed by rules and regulations for every contingency. Here, there would be no Navy Handbook or Marine Corps Manual. Not that Greg had ever paid a great deal of attention to either publication but their framework had governed their lives one way or another, since they met. Here in the civilian world, the only regs they would be accountable to would be those of their own creation. The sense of freedom was wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

"Ready for the nickel tour? We'll start at the heart of it all." Jack led them toward the hangar. Kate rather thought the house would be the heart of it all but she didn't say anything.

"So that's the R4D you were telling me about?" Greg nodded toward the Skytrain as they stepped into the building's cool interior.

"Yep. She was out on a run with a guy who flies part-time for me when you were here last week." Jack patted the wing of the big plane affectionately. "I use her for freight hauling and she can be fitted with water tanks when we help the Forest Service during fire season."

"Does the Navy know you've borrowed one of their planes?" Kate asked. While the aircraft carried the Hanson Charter Air logo, she could see the faded military insignia near the rudder and on the wings.

"Borrowed? Oh, no, honey, she's surplus. Bought her myself in '46."

"Really?" Kate said, surprised. "Did the Navy have a garage sale?"

"In a manner of speaking. The defense department started jettisoning surplus equipment at the end of the war – mostly after World War II, more after Korea - everything from planes to jeeps to file cabinets." He gestured at the office in one corner of the building where the desk and other fittings looked like they'd come straight out of the rear area offices on Espritos Marcos.

"They shoved entire squadrons off carrier decks just to get rid of them," Jack continued. "Sad, really, but some Washington bean counters decided it would be cheaper to dump them in the ocean than haul them home. They brought some birds back and scrapped them out or dumped them in bone yards in the middle of the desert."

"Uncle Sam helped build this business in more ways than he knows," Jack continued. "Got this old gal and the office furnishings all for surplus prices, plus there's a jeep out back. Heck, I'm a government leftover, too, and my mechanic out there, Donahue, turned wrenches all over the South Pacific back in the day. That's why I thought of Greg when I decided to sell. Thought maybe the two of you were ready to move up here to God's country." He steered them out a side door of the hangar and along a flagstone walk to the house. A sleek calico cat sitting on a stone wall cast them a disdainful look as they passed.

"That's Wild Cat. She comes with the place," Jack said. "Can't touch her but she's the best mouser I've ever seen. Come on, we'll go in the front door. Now keep in mind my Alice has been gone for a while and I'm in the middle of packing up to move. I'm not a tidy housekeeper and I'm not afraid to admit it. Some things need a woman's touch," he paused and inclined his head to Kate, "so I'll just apologize now and get it over."

Kate recalled the spotless interior of the hangar and wondered about Greg's thinly veiled references to the house "needing work." If Jack Hanson kept his house as spotless as his business, she didn't see a problem.

"Don't worry about it, Jack," Greg said with a twinkle in his eye, "you should have seen Katie's tent when she was on La Cava." Kate feinted a jab at him, which he neatly avoided. He was right, she couldn't argue that, but hey, he should have tried juggling sleeping and work quarters that were crammed into a tent already being used as storage for the squadron's black market trade goods. She mounted the first step to the wrap-around porch and all hell broke loose.

Two furry shapes shot through a hole in the latticework under the porch and rocketed straight for them. Kate got a glimpse of button bright eyes glittering in bandits' masks as the raccoons careened across her feet. An ear-splitting howl followed and within seconds a red blur that appeared to be mostly ears and tail tore around the corner of the house, barreled across the porch and vanished in hot pursuit.

"Bloody fu -," Kate clamped down on the second syllable with effort as she stumbled backward. Greg caught her and set her back on her feet. She regained both her balance and her senses in time to hear a coonhound baying in the distance.

"Friendly little varmints, aren't they?" Jack said with affection. "They moved in last spring, right about the time I lost Alice. I didn't have the heart to turn 'em out. I've been feeding 'em, they come running when they hear people. They stay out of the house. More or less."

Kate's childhood experience with raccoons led her to doubt this.

"That's why I got the coonhound, see, to keep 'em in line. He'll be coming with me, though, so you two'll need a good dog when you move out here."

Kate noticed his use of _when_ , not _if_. She exchanged a look with Greg who only shrugged and grinned.

"You got a dog?" Jack queried.

"We've got 10 of them at the moment," Greg said. It had taken no small amount of effort to find a suitable person to stay at their house to keep an eye on Joy and Jim, plus Kilt, Valor and all eight of her thriving offspring so they could make this trip. A neighbor who was a retired Navy nursing commander fit the bill and Kate was reasonably sure the house would still be standing when they got back.

"I don't think you'll need quite that many . . ." Jack trailed off as he opened the front door. "After you."

Kate stepped over the threshold and gasped with delight. Hardwood floors and interior fretwork gleamed with years of polish. The sun illuminating the stained glass window transoms lent an almost church-like atmosphere to the graciously proportioned rooms.

The house was also a cluttered morass of furniture, rugs, lamps, books, papers, magazines, mechanics' manuals and flight logs. Dozens of bits of aviation detritus from photos to scale models littered every available surface. Boxes overflowing with miscellany were either half-hearted packing or absent minded storage.

"Go ahead, take a look around," Jack waved his hand. "Greg saw it all last week, he can show you the place. Take your time, I'll be in the kitchen, putting the coffee on." He vanished.

"This place is huge," Kate whispered. Her voice was swallowed by the echoing spaces of the half-empty rooms.

"Jack and Alice had a big family," Greg said. "He's a good 15 years older than me. They married in '35. He flew with the AVG in China, then got out of the service. They moved out here in '41, before Pearl, and started the business."

Kate slipped her hand into Greg's as they wandered from room to room. Front parlor, dining room, living room, a kitchen that looked much like it must have when the house was built. Jack gave them a friendly smile and went back to fiddling with a coffee boiler that wouldn't have been out of place in a turn of the century Sears and Roebuck catalog. Kate didn't know whether to be amused at the quaint antiquity or impressed that the water pump in the huge dry sink along one wall still worked.

They moved on. Jack had started the process of sorting through decades of living. Some rooms were stripped to the bare walls, others remained a confusing jumble of half-filled packing boxes. She was aware of Greg's eyes watching her as she exclaimed over the pocket doors, built-in china cupboards and stained glass.

Even in its disorganized state, the house hummed with memories. The Hansons had raised a family here, had bowed their heads for grace before supper around the huge harvest table in the kitchen, gathered with aunts and uncles and cousins for holiday meals in the lace curtained dining room, sat on the front porch and watched fireflies blinking across the lawn in the summer dusk.

"Check out the bathroom." Greg gestured to a closed door in the hallway off the kitchen.

Kate closed her fingers over the crystal doorknob, then paused, eyebrows arched.

"Something isn't going to come flapping out at me, is it?"

He chuckled.

"I don't think so. Just open it."

Kate turned the knob. It came off in her hand.

She stood, speechless, while Greg folded his arms over his chest and grinned.

"The whole place is like that," he said. "The house is basically sound but nothing's been upgraded in years. You saw the kitchen. If we move in here, something's going to break every time we turn around. And if it's not broken now, it will be after the kids get hold of it. Are you up for that?"

"I lived in a tent in the middle of a Marine base for six months," she countered. "I think I can handle it." She paused. "But we're gonna have to relocate those raccoons."

Greg took the knob from her, inserted it back into the hardware on the door and with a twist, opened it to reveal a bathroom complete with a pedestal sink, clawfoot tub and positively Victorian-era toilet with the tank mounted on the wall.

"At least it's not an open air shower stall," Kate said dryly.

They finished touring the first floor and she paused in the foyer, closing her eyes as her fingers traced the carved finial at the foot of the open staircase. She imagined children's laughter and the joyful scrabble of feet and paws, heard the slap of a screen door, could smell bread baking in the kitchen. It combined all the elements of home she'd treasured in her mind since her parents' death when she was 19. Family, a sense of belonging and purpose.

Since marrying Greg – oh, hell, since meeting Greg - her life had been a gypsy caravan of existence that paid little heed to the concept of putting down roots. Walking through this house, hearing the echoes of memories, she suddenly realized how desperately she wanted a place to call home with him and the kids. No more temporary housing. No more off-base rentals. She was done living in tents and Quonsets and barracks or anywhere with olive drab or khaki color schemes. Her soul craved fresh air, green grass and blue skies. Raccoons under the porch notwithstanding, she amended.

They navigated the stairs to the second floor. Jack's cleaning had not reached this level yet and the hall was lined with stacks of books and papers. Greg pushed open one of the bedroom doors and they stepped through. Kate bumped into a tottering stack of boxes and one tumbled open, spilling a collection of neatly wound balls of string.

"The Hansons were frugal," Greg said, helping her restore them to the box.

"Is that another word for never throwing anything out?" Kate's low heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she crossed the room to look out the window. Dust motes danced in the sunlight shafting through the glass. The vista was breathtaking – sharp points of pine trees stretched toward infinity, the Sierras wrapped like a guardian behind them, and in the near distance, Lake Tahoe glittered in the sunshine.

She turned from the window and slipped her arms around Greg's neck. His hands settled automatically at her waist.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Yes what?"

"Yes. Let's do this. Let's buy the place."

"Are you sure? You saw that kitchen. I swear, Kate, it has the original fixtures from 1894. It's going to take a lot of work."

"I don't care. It feels right. It feels like what we're supposed to do."

She kissed him, enjoyed the rush of power that surged between them, the continual affirmation they were made for each other.

"Just to be clear," he whispered against her mouth, "you want to move into a house that barely has indoor plumbing and throw in with a battered old fighter pilot to run a business neither of us have any experience with."

"You ran the hottest squadron in the South Pacific, I think we can handle flying hunters around in a few Cessnas and an old transport. Besides, I threw in with you in '43, I'm not about to back out now," she said and kissed him again. On a rising scale of crazy things she'd done with and because of Greg over the years, this was definitely at the top of the list.

 **One year later**

 **Autumn 1956**

Framed front pages of _The New York Times, Detroit Free Press and Chicago Tribune_ featuring Kate's war-time photographs of the Black Sheep hung on the wall overlooking a massive and hopelessly cluttered partner's desk in the office of Boyington Charter Air Service. An insolent-looking gray cat lay atop a stack of papers in a wire mesh basket on one corner.

Seated at the desk, Kate clamped a pen between her teeth and tried to keep the cat's tail out of her coffee mug while she searched for the envelope she'd addressed to the fuel company. She'd just located it under a stack of reservation bookings when a chorus of barking dogs pulled her attention away from the day's bookkeeping.

She shoved back from the desk, thought about evicting the cat and decided it was a hopeless cause. The cat went where the cat wanted to go. She stretched and walked out of the office into the hangar. The main bay door was open and the frosty morning had given way to an afternoon drenched with sunshine and the scent of pine.

Kate recognized the sound of the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 radial engine before the familiar gull-shaped wings of a Chance Vought F4U Corsair came into focus against the glowing backdrop of the sun. Her heart leaped. She hadn't been sure until this very moment it was going to happen. Greg had orchestrated the whole deal – the after hours phone calls, the exchange of money the government probably would never find out about, the justifications it was going to be put out to pasture anyway. Jack Hanson's comment about the Department of Defense scrapping surplus equipment had stuck in Greg's mind and now one of the grand old warbirds was coming home to roost at their place, a final tribute to the boys who'd given so much in the South Pacific. Kate wasn't entirely clear about what Greg planned to do with it but that was a problem for another day. It was finally here and that was all that mattered.

The pilot set the plane down with the casual grace of someone who'd done it a thousand times before and Kate knelt, holding the collars of three excited dogs as the plane taxied in. Some dogs chased cars. The Boyington pack chased airplanes.

The Corsair rolled to a stop and the engine died with a sputter. Kate released the dogs and watched as the pilot shoved open the canopy and climbed out with practiced agility. It was entirely possible, Kate thought, that his dexterity at finding the footholds was motivated by the fact the plane was smoking. She'd grown so used to seeing that while she was stationed in the Solomons, it didn't cause any undue alarm. She'd never been around a Corsair that didn't look like it might spontaneously combust when it set down after a mission.

Except for one.

One that had come to the Black Sheep right out of the factory, its powerful lines as pristine as a peacock's plumage, its engine purring without a hitch. It hadn't exactly been intended for the Black Sheep when it arrived on Espritos, it had ended up in their possession as more of a loan. An unauthorized, long-term loan.

She stared at the plane and blinked.

What the . . .?

Were her eyes deceiving her? Was she seeing what she wanted to see only because that war-time caper was on her mind? She squinted, trying to make out the ghost of the number painted on the fuselage. Time and the elements had faded the paint to near illegibility but . . . was it . . . really . . .?

403.

She blinked hard, took a step closer and refocused.

403.

The numbers burned into her retina. Kate stared in disbelief. What were the odds?

The deal Greg made was for any available Corsair that had served in the South Pacific, no particular squadron affiliation required. They'd been lucky to snag one that was still airworthy. So many of them had been abandoned, literally, where they fell, dumped in South Pacific waters or tossed into scrap piles. With aviation now pursuing jet engine technology, the old piston driven birds were relegated to the bone yards, relics of a bygone era that would never return.

But this one? The very plane that had pulled the Black Sheep from the brink of being disbanded? A surge of emotion ran through her and she felt goose bumps ripple across her arms. This was more of a homecoming than either she or Greg had anticipated.

She recalled 403 in its glory days, unmarred by combat, freshly delivered to the strip on Espritos Marcos, early morning sunlight glinting off gleaming wings. Now it was a shadow of its former self. The faded paint was etched with corrosion and the plane's aura of deadly power was matched by one of hard use. Even as she watched, oil began to drip from the engine in slow, fat drops. Kate chuckled in spite of herself. She remembered John "Hutch" Hutchinson, the 214's head mechanic, saying once that if you ever saw a Corsair that didn't have an oil puddle under it, it only meant the engine was drained dry.

The pilot jogged toward her, putting distance between himself and the smoking plane. He was a wiry man, younger than Greg, with a baseball cap over red hair worn in a military buzz cut. He pulled off a pair of aviator sunglasses and raised a hand in greeting. The dogs rushed happily to meet him – Kilt , the border collie, Valor, the stray-turned-permanent-resident, and Spirit, the little blue merle with the half-mask face. The pilot greeted them with an air of familiar resignation. The dogs were rather hard to ignore.

"I'd have radioed to let you know I was coming in, Miss Kate, but the radio in that bird don't work. The left rudder don't work and the fuel gauge don't work. I reckon I'd have found a bunch of other things that don't work if I'd stayed up there any longer. I been a'prayin' since I took off in Arizona. I think the only reason it stayed in the air was out of sheer cussedness. Navy shoulda kept that one, it's gonna fly forever if it don't just fall in a heap first."

No matter how often she'd told him to drop the "miss," Charlie Bennett was an Alabama boy at heart and never less than respectful to his boss's wife. He and Greg had served together when Greg reformed the 214 in the air campaign against North Korea. Charlie had been 19 then, fresh out of flight school. Greg had recognized the boy's raw talent and taken Charlie as his wingman. Charlie reminded Kate of Larry Casey, Jim Gutterman, Bobby Boyle and the rest of the original Black Sheep, all rolled into one - skill, guts and a never-say-never attitude.

Once Boyington Air's presence was established, Kate suggested hiring a partner. They had more work than a single pilot could handle.

"I've got a partner, sweetheart," Greg had said, kissing her on the forehead.

"You don't have one who knows how to fly," she'd returned. While she'd gradually conquered her dislike of being airborne, her skill set kept her firmly grounded with the administrative end of the business. Charlie Bennett had been with them for six months and things had never been better.

"But," Charlie said now, with an obvious air of pride, "I got the old girl back in one piece. The rest is up to Pappy." He grimaced. "I'm not sure what he plans to do with her but I sure hope he don't expect to do it without some serious overhauling first."

Kate smiled at Charlie's use of Greg's nickname from the original Black Sheep days.

"He'll be excited to see it when he gets home," she said. "Thank you for bringing her back. I know how badly Greg wanted to go get her himself but those boys from Texas couldn't wait to get up to their fishing camp." She studied the plane. "Hard to believe the Navy's mothballing the Corsairs. They were the belle of the ball back in the day." She was surprised at the degree of emotion seeing the plane evoked. No doubt, she told herself, it was because it was this particular plane. Seriously, what were the odds?

"Yes, ma'am," Charlie said, scrubbing fingers through his bristly hair and resettling his cap. "If I hadn't picked her up when I did, she'd be in a scrap heap in the desert. Or sold to some South American country."

"Any trouble with the paperwork?" Kate asked. It had taken all a reprisal of Greg's black market bargaining skills, honed to a razor's edge in the South Pacific, to have the plane transferred to his name. It helped that his name still held a fair amount of clout with the Department of Defense. It also helped that he knew exactly which markers to call in and where to apply pressure.

It was meant to be, she thought, shaking her head. It wasn't the first time he'd . . . liberated . . . number 403.

"Go on up to the house and get something to eat," she told Charlie. "I'll radio Greg and let him know you got home safe."

"Much obliged, Miss Kate. Tell Pappy I'll be out first thing tomorrow. We got that group coming in from Tulsa and it's gonna take half the day just to load their gear. I never seen folks so crazy for walkin' around in the woods."

He ambled off toward the house, still muttering about the vagaries of the deep woods hiking and camping party that was scheduled to be dropped on a grass strip near the head of the Pacific Crest Scenic Trail the next day.

Kate went back to the office. The cat was now upside down in the wire basket, all four paws sticking up in the air, looking like a furry, deceased bug. She poked it in the belly. It opened one lazy eye, then closed it again.

Kate checked her watch. Greg should be on his way back from delivering the fishing party. She picked up the radio mic and after adjusting a few dials, called, "This is Boyington Air base, calling Renegade 1."

Static crackled and Greg's voice came back.

"Renegade 1 here. I was just thinking about you, sweetheart."

"I bet you were. Your special delivery just arrived. You might want to get back here before it blows up and takes the hangar with it."

Greg chuckled.

"Just like old times."

"Um . . .," she paused, "did you request any plane specifically?"

"No, I just told Bennett to make sure they gave him one that could stay in the air long enough to get home. I didn't want to pay freight to have it trucked all the way up here. Is there a problem?"

"No," she said, amused. "There's no problem."

"Did you take it up for a spin?"

Kate sputtered indignantly even though she heard the teasing tone in Greg's voice.

"Renegade 1, did you fall and hit your head? Oh by the way, Bennett says he wants hazardous duty pay for ferrying it up from Arizona. Hurry up and get back here. I've got a surprise for you."

His laugh echoed across the miles.

"It's not what you're thinking," she said firmly.

More laughter.

She gave up.

"Although you'll probably get that, too."

"Roger that. I'm on my way."

Kate hung up the mic and walked slowly back outside to the Corsair. She circled the plane, noted the expanding oil slick under the nose and the Golden Ale patch on the port side of the rudder. She pressed her hand against the leading edge of the wing, the metal warm under her fingers. She closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her.

"Just wait until your daddy gets home," she whispered.

 **The End**

 **Sort Of**

 **Or maybe, "To Be Continued "would be more appropriate**

This tale will be continued in "The Legacy," the story behind Corsair number 403. Coming soon. I promise.

Thanks for reading!


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